Shānghán zǒngbìng lùn 傷寒總病論
A General Discussion of Cold-Damage Diseases by 龐安時 (Páng Ānshí, zì Āncháng, 1042–1099, of Qíshuǐ, 北宋)
About the work
Páng Ānshí’s six-juan Shānghán treatise, completed by 1100 (Páng died in 1099, but the work’s prefaces and the appended Yīnxùn 音訓 and Xiūzhì yàofǎ 修治藥法 — compiled by Páng’s disciple Dǒng Bǐng 董炳 in Zhènghé guǐsì 政和癸巳, 1113 — bracket the formation of the received recension). Páng’s distinctive clinical-theoretical contribution to the Sòng Shānghán tradition is that he supplemented Zhāng Jī with original prescriptions for those symptom-patterns Zhāng had described but not prescribed for — a programmatic completion of the Shānghán matrix. The work circulates with a Sū Shì correspondence-tablet (a hand-traced calligraphic facsimile of Sū’s reply to Páng) at its head, and a Huáng Tíngjiān 1100 postface that originally was to have been the preface (Huáng waited for Sū to write the principal preface; Sū returned from Hǎinán in autumn 1100 and died on the way north in 1101 without writing it; Huáng’s postface was therefore moved to the front to serve as preface). The Zhènghé period (1111–1118) saw a court ban on SūHuáng publications, and the surviving Sòng prints of the work have Sū’s and Huáng’s names redacted — but the SKQS print restores them.
Tiyao
Shānghán zǒngbìng lùn, six juan, with appended Yīnxùn one juan and Xiūzhì yàofǎ one juan, by Páng Ānshí of the Sòng. Ānshí, zì Āncháng, was a man of Qíshuǐ, originally a literate gentleman, who befriended Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān. The end of the sixth juan appends a letter to Sū Shì in which the meaning of this work is fully discussed; the head of the work bears Sū Shì’s reply to Páng — copied by hand-tracing of the calligraphic original — and a Huáng Tíngjiān postface, which here serves as the front preface. The end of Huáng’s preface says: “the front preface, the Hǎishàng rén [Sū Shì] has promised to make; the right side has therefore been left blank for his signature.” Composed in Yuánfú 3 (1100), 3rd month — at which time Sū Shì had been demoted to Dānzhōu 儋州, only in the 5th month moving to Liánzhōu 廉州, and only in the 7th month crossing the sea back to Lián. So in the 3rd month of that year Sū could still be called Hǎishàng rén (Man of the Sea-Side). But Sū returned northward in the 8th month of that year and died at Chángzhōu 常州 in the 7th month of the next; the front preface was never composed, and Huáng’s postface was therefore moved to the front to crown the work.
In the original recension’s preface, Huáng Tíngjiān’s name was scraped out; in the appended Sū Shì correspondence-tablet, Sū’s name was likewise scraped out. Examining the appended Yīnxùn one juan and Xiūzhì yàofǎ one juan: titled by Páng’s disciple Dǒng Bǐng 董炳 with the date Zhènghé guǐsì (1113). At that time the prohibition of SūHuáng writings was still in force; the names were therefore tabooed and redacted. The present base copy is from the Sòng print, retaining the redactions; we have now restored them.
The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records only Páng’s Nán jīng jiě 難經解 (twice, in different chapters) and not this work. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo records the Pángshì jiācáng mìbǎo fāng 龐氏家藏秘寶方 in five juan, citing Chén Zhènsūn: “Ānshí’s reputation as a physician rested entirely on his Shānghán work; this book was sent to me by Wú Yán 吳炎, zì Huìshū, of Nánchéng” — and below it lists Huáng Tíngjiān’s preface. This appears to be a different work but agrees with the Huáng preface, suggesting that the Shānghán zǒngbìng lùn may already have been without an independent print copy in the Sòng, and circulated in transcribed forms with variant titles.
The Wénxiàn also records Zhāng Lěi 張耒’s postface: “Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn gives every detail of the disease-discussion and prescription, and adds adjustment-up-and-down-by-pattern as warning to the reader. Ah, the heart of a benevolent man! And not without divine and marvellous understanding could one do it. Āncháng [Páng] further worried about those symptom-patterns that have prescriptions [in the Shānghán] and those that do not, and continued the work in several juan; in technical art he matched the ancients. Huáinán says, ‘Āncháng could converse with the Shānghán’ — surely it is so.” This postface is not in the present recension; perhaps lost in transmission.
Yè Mèngdé’s Bìshǔ lùhuà expresses considerable dissatisfaction with Páng. But Zēng Mǐnxíng’s Dúxǐng zázhì 獨醒雜志 records his miraculous treatment of Wáng Gōngbì of Sìzhōu — the man’s stone-and-elixir poisoning was severe — and especially marvelously his treatment of Gōngbì’s daughter. We suspect that Yè Mèngdé was originally Cài Jīng’s faction and held it against Ānshí for being one of Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān’s old friends — partisan-house-prejudice persisting into the literary record.
(Respectfully verified, 10th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1100/1100, fixed by Huáng Tíngjiān’s preface dated 元符 3 三月 (Yuánfú 3, 3rd month — March/April 1100). Páng Ānshí died in 1099, so the work was completed in his lifetime; the formal published recension with prefaces was prepared in early 1100, with the addition of Dǒng Bǐng’s Yīnxùn and Xiūzhì yàofǎ in 1113 closing the formation of the received text.
The work’s significance:
(a) Programmatic completion of the Shānghán: Páng’s most original contribution. Zhāng Jī’s Shānghán lùn described some symptom-patterns without giving prescriptions; Páng provided original prescriptions for those gaps, on the principle that Zhāng could not have intended to leave the matrix incomplete. This is “writing in” the gaps with consistent therapeutic logic — a form of clinical philology unique to Páng among Sòng Shānghán commentators.
(b) The SūHuángPáng literary-medical network: the work documents one of the more remarkable Sòng intellectual friendships, a Confucian-poet circle (Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān) intersecting with a clinical-medical specialist (Páng) in mutual respect and intellectual exchange. The hand-traced Sū correspondence-tablet at the head of the work is a unique calligraphic-and-medical artifact in Chinese medical bibliography.
(c) The Cài-Jīng-faction redaction and SKQS restoration: the Zhèng-hé-period scraping of Sū and Huáng’s names from the print, and the SKQS editors’ restoration based on the Sòng base text, illustrates the editorial honesty of the Qiánlóng compilers — they restored the Yuán-fú-period authorship attribution rather than perpetuating the Zhènghé taboo. This is one of the SKQS’s quieter but politically meaningful contributions.
The Yè Mèngdé / Cài Jīng partisan-malice diagnosis by the SKQS editors is one of their more forthright pieces of historiographical analysis. Yè was a known Cài Jīng partisan; Páng was a SūHuáng friend; the YèPáng coolness in the Bìshǔ lùhuà is therefore best read as faction-rivalry rather than medical-doctrinal disagreement.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western secondary literature on this specific work.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (treats Páng Ānshí in the broader Sòng Shānghán context).
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Shānghán zǒng-bìng lùn and the textual situation).
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Shānghán xué zhī yào 傷寒學之要, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 2008. Treats Páng among the Sòng Shānghán line.
Other points of interest
The hand-traced Sū Shì calligraphic facsimile at the head of the work is one of the more unusual editorial elements in any Chinese medical book. The character of the SūHuángPáng circle — and the Zhènghé taboo on SūHuáng material — gave the SKQS editors an opportunity to display political historiography in their tíyào; they made the most of it.
The Páng family’s Mìbǎo fāng 秘寶方 — a separate work in 5 juan — was a household-prescription compilation distinct from the Shānghán zǒngbìng lùn, lost in independent transmission and known only through Wénxiàn tōngkǎo’s record.